Eve Of
by Kia Vail-Kagami
Summary: The evening before moving to Tokyo with her brother, Hokuto has some creative work to finish.


The wonderful thing about being an identical twin (in everything but gender), fifteen years old Sumeragi Hokuto thought happily, was that she never needed her brother to be present if she wanted to see if her newly created outfit would suit him. And so she never had to ruin the surprise before she presented him with his newest attire. It was perfect. No, it was more than that: it was destiny! It had to be. Fate had made her the best fashion designer of the future (of this she was sure), and granted her the very looks of the person she most loved to design for.

Which was only fair, because said person made a terrible model. Despite his embarrassment, Hokuto could usually bully her brother into trying stuff on for her, but the more interesting the clothes were, the more he would fidget and flail and make it difficult to do anything without accidentally poking needles into his skin.

Which was why Hokuto had started ages ago to sneak into Subaru's room at night and measure his size in his sleep.

It hadn't been necessary two years ago, she thought wistfully as she stood and held the suit jacket against herself. In cases like this, when the shirt wasn't formfitting, it still didn't matter, but when it came to less wide clothes, the differences were now showing.

Her waist was still as narrow as it had ever been, but Hokuto _was_ a girl, after all, and her brother, obviously, was not, which meant that he didn't have breasts while she did. Cupping them with her hands and a thoughtful purse of lips, Hokuto accepted that they were rather small, and that this should probably bother her more than it did.

When they first began to show, she'd hated them. Instead of going out to buy bras as other growing girls tended to do whether they needed them or not, she'd tried to hide them. To her, they were separating her from her brother, a physical reminder of the passage of time and that they wouldn't always be together.

Funny enough, it was this that had started her obsession with designing clothes. If they couldn't be identical, she had eventually decided with the stubbornness of someone unwilling to see the downside of anything for long, then they had to complement each other. And so she'd started designing a boy-version of every girl-outfit she got and vice versa, before she gave up on clothes from the stores all together and created their outfits to match from the start.

Subaru, being Subaru, had never quite understood her initial panic, nor her obsession to compensate for it. Innocent as he was, the idea that one day Hokuto might not be with him anymore had probably never even occurred to him.

To Hokuto, it was an ongoing problem. In all her life she'd only been separated from her twin for one year, and it had proven beyond doubt that he needed someone to protect him. After all, he came back wearing gloves, and had not been allowed to be without them ever since. Because _something_ bad had happened to him. Because Hokuto had not been with him.

Obviously.

The gloves were another thing that separated them, and not just in the way they looked.

Hokuto liked to choose his outfits to go along with them.

Her hands (naked, with painted nails) brushed over the fabric of Subaru's newest suit after she'd flopped back to the floor. It was a shade of green, light enough to appear nearly white when combined with darker colours, and would go perfectly with Subaru's eyes. She knew, because it went perfectly with hers. The cuffs she would frame with black lace, to go with the buttons, and she would to so this night, because the deadline for this project was tomorrow evening, and she would hardly be able to work on it on the train.

Hokuto frowned. She would hate for the quality of her work to suffer from the lack of time, and it wasn't like Subaru would _need_ it tomorrow – at least, she reasonably doubted it – but she wanted to give it to him as a Welcome To Tokyo gift and a good luck charm.

Grandmother would most definitely frown at _that_. Hokuto giggled to herself, delighted by even this small act of defiance. It wasn't like she didn't _love_ her grandmother, or the rest of the household, but in her opinion it was about time they started living on their own.

Tokyo was full of adventure, freedom and hardboiled love stories, only waiting especially for them. Which was exactly the reason why this suit had to be finished tomorrow, before the train left.

Also waiting for them were school and Subaru's work, but Hokuto ignored them for the sake of the moment.

And pricked her finger with the needle.

"Ouch," she said muffled, with the finger already in her mouth, least she'd stain the beautiful fabric it had taken her weeks to find – hence her lack of remaining time.

There was a polite knock on the door, that distinct sound created only by Subaru's gloved hands. "Hokuto-chan?" he called quietly. "Can I come in?"

Hokuto answered something that was meat to be "Wait a second," but was made incomprehensible by the finger in her mouth. Fortunately Subaru knew her well enough to tell from the tone of her voice and wait outside until she had hidden her current work of art beneath her futon and called him in, sans finger.

Suabru greeted her with a smile when he stepped in, but there was something wary in it when he regarded the sewing equipment strewn all around her. "What are you working on?" he asked, either out of politeness or some sort of vague, nameless fear.

Hokuto laughed in a way that made him cringe and remind her that it was late and most walls in the mansion were made of paper. "It's a secret," she teased. And then, because she couldn't help herself, "Your wedding suit."

It said a lot about Hokuto's general behaviour that Subaru remained relatively calm. He merely blinked in confusion because, really, this was random even for her.

"I'm not going to marry, Hokuto-chan," he pointed out.

"Not yet, perhaps. But one day you will, and if I'm going to have any say in this, it will be soon."  
"You're not going to have any say in this." But from the vaguely worried look on Subaru's face, he knew as well as her that oh yes, she would. Hokuto laughed again, only to become serious a second later.

"Remember when we were little and thought we would marry each other one day?"

Subaru nodded, with little embarrassment for his standards. It had seemed only natural for them, then. They loved each other, they wanted to stay together, and to the extent of their knowledge, that had been what marriage was about.

"Well, I can't marry you," Hokuto explained.

"You only figured that out recently?"

"I figured that out when I was six, silly. The point is, I can't marry you. So I'll have to marry someone else, and someone else will have to marry you."

"You make it sound like it was a burden."

"Someone will have the honour to taking me for their wife, okay? And it will be an honour, because I'm gorgeous and talented and great at cooking. And of course, because you are my brother and therefore just as gorgeous, the girls will be after you too. As will the boys."

Now he did blush, which satisfied Hokuto greatly – some colour suited his face very well, and she had so far failed to make him wear make-up.

Also, she had long since decided that whoever she handed her darling brother over to would have to be strong, determined, attentive, loyal and able to protect him. In other words, it should be her. But since marrying him herself was out of the question (for obvious reasons), someone much like her would have to do. And since there weren't many girls around with the traits she required, men had to be taken into consideration as well. Subaru had never shown any preferences anyway.

Besides, he would make such a beautiful bride!

(Hokuto had long since given up wondering whether thinking things like this went more in the direction of narcissism or of incest.)

"Hokuto-chan," Subaru protested. "I'm a boy. And I don't have to marry. I don't even know if I want to."

"Of course you will." His sister brushed off his words with a generous wave of her hand. "You need someone to care for you, and if I'm not around, someone else will have to do it."

"I'm capable of caring for myself." Subaru looked down and reached up to straighten his hat as he did when he felt uncomfortable, but he wasn't wearing one and only ended up blushing even more. But something had changed in his eyes when he looked up again – something had changed in his eyes, as if he had for the first time realised that Hokuto might not always be living next door.

She couldn't help herself then – she hugged him.

"Someone will become more important to you than I am," she whispered into his ear, because the walls _were_ made of paper, and her words were meant only for him. "Just promise me that you will always love me."

Subaru hugged her back. "If you promise the same."

They sat like this for a while, suddenly all too aware that they would be leaving this place in a few hours, and even though they would frequently visit, the twins would never really _return _here. This part of their lives was over.

"Actually," Subaru said when he pulled way, "I came to see if you'd finished packing."

They both spared a look for the empty suitcase taking up space on Hokuto's futon.

"I've still got eight hours left," she assures him.

"And what about sleeping?" Subaru asked, knowing how long his sister usually needed for sorting through her things.

"I can sleep on the train. You can't." It was true – he would spend all the way gazing out of the window and watching the world go by. "So go to bed, and leave me to finish this. Don't worry, we won't miss the train because of me."

After Subaru had left, Hokuto was once again alone with her sewing and all it stood for. She loved to tease her brother, but it was true that she wanted him to find someone soon. Before he managed to get himself killed for something stupid, if that wasn't asked for too much.

Briefly, her thoughts wandered to her own potential romances, but for herself she wouldn't have to be so picky. Her future husband merely had to be perfect (and a pioneer). Subaru's future partner would have to meet her approval, would have to care for him in her place, and never, ever take him away from her completely. As far as she saw concerned, they weren't even allowed to move to another city.

Hokuto sighed. It would have made things so much easier if she _had_ been able to marry her brother, after all. Then there wouldn't be any partner's needs to be considered. And the idea of someone else taking her place in Subaru's heart wouldn't have to scare her so much.

She had boyfriends before. She knew her brother would always come first. But if Subaru handled falling in love with the same dedication as everything else he did, then she would have to learn how to share.

But sharing was still better than losing him completely, something she knew would happen if her brother didn't find something to stay alive for.

Thinking of Tokyo and all the single men and women waiting for them, the romance and the adventure, Hokuto picked up her needle and began to sew, each pinprick a wish for the future.

May 25, 2009


End file.
